West End Strategy Team - Executive Vice President

Position Overview

West End Strategy Team (WEST) is seeking an exceptional manager and strategic leader to serve as the firm’s Executive Vice President. 

The Executive Vice President (EVP) will play a key leadership role in the firm, managing our client teams and ensuring we continue to provide best-in-class client services.

The EVP will serve as a trusted advisor to the President and Founder, lead the client-facing teams, and develop systems and processes that support those teams and enable the business to grow and flourish.

The EVP will directly supervise the client-facing Partners and Vice Presidents, and support, grow and mentor the entire client-facing team, ensuring they have the capabilities, training and resources to succeed on their execution of client engagements and deliverables.

The ideal candidate is a proven, outstanding leader of large teams who loves organizational and team management, excels at creating and implementing systems and processes designed to help staff flourish and grow, and will thrive in the fast-paced nature of strategic communications work that supports mission-driven organizations.


Company Overview

West End Strategy Team is a premier, full-service strategic communications firm focused on expanding social justice, racial and gender equity and human rights. We partner with clients to drive meaningful change through strategic communications, including message development, media relations, online strategy and crisis communications.

Through our work with clients, we’re promoting human and civil rights. We’re advocating for abortion rights. We’re fighting against attacks on our democracy at home and around the world. We’re opposing book bans that threaten the right to education in communities across the country, and we’re pushing back against unconstitutional restrictions on voting access. We’re working on the cutting-edge issues of the moment to try to make our world a better place.

We work closely with clients to define their goals, identify key audiences, and develop and implement a communications strategy to achieve success. We partner with clients to manage media relations, conduct training, develop messaging and content, mitigate risks and respond to crises, conceptualize and execute newsworthy events, and leverage media placements to reach key audiences.

We are a team of more than 25 passionate, smart and talented colleagues headquartered in Washington, D.C., with staff in New York and Chicago, who are committed to creating social change. Every day we drive meaningful change through our strategic communications work.

Roles and Responsibilities

Company Leadership (20%)

• Partner with the President to lead the business in executing long-term strategy and day-to-day management.
• Serve as a key member of the WEST Leadership Team, helping further the success of the company.
• Work closely with the business development team on client retention strategies.

• Lead the client services team (5 direct reports, 20+ total employees) including onboarding, management, definition of metrics of success, training, and client team and work product delegation.

• Provide one-on-one coaching and mentoring to managers, helping them foster their leadership potential.

• Ensure WEST is consistently producing best-in-class deliverables, on time, for clients.
• Ensure WEST teams have the skills, capabilities, tools and resources to execute successfully for clients.
• Oversee a comprehensive training program for team members on client engagement, deliverables and people management skills.
• Refine WEST’s standards of excellence and hold teams accountable to these standards.

• Oversee operations decisions and ensure operational needs of staff and company are met in a timely and efficient manner.

• Team Leadership: You are a proven, outstanding leader of large teams. Helping your team members become stronger leaders and managers is one of your proudest accomplishments. You have experience setting vision and direction for a large team and managing teams effectively to achieve results. You hold yourself and your teams accountable to achieving excellence and delivering superior work products You thrive in developing training, systems and processes to ensure staff have the tools and resources they need to succeed.

• Strategy and Execution: You have a track record of developing strategies to meet ambitious goals and generating solutions to solve problems. You plan, prioritize and execute, all with excellent judgment and efficiency. You are an exceptional project manager with the ability to invest, manage, and communicate effectively with others to achieve objectives and meet deadlines, especially in a fast-paced, high-volume environment. And you have a track record of developing and implementing new or improved systems and processes that deliver excellent results.

• Relationship building: You develop and maintain collaborative working relationships with diverse groups of stakeholders. You are trustworthy and when you say you’ll do something, you do it. You have a track record of building strong, effective partnerships with your boss or principal. You bring the right amount of confidence and self-awareness to those relationships to be able to both disagree when needed and embrace the final decision (even if it wasn’t yours.)

• Superior communications skills: You have superb interpersonal skills and effective and persuasive communication skills, both verbal and written. You are engaging, transparent and can command a room. You inspire and engender trust whether you are meeting with a colleague one-to-one in the office or leading a meeting on Zoom.

Compensation, Benefits and Location
 
This position is in Washington, D.C. WEST employees are currently working a hybrid schedule with three days in the office and two working remotely.

The base salary range for this position is $175,000-$200,000, commensurate with experience. The WestEnd Strategy Team provides a generous bonus structure. Benefits include health, dental, long-term disability, short-term disability, paid parental leave and a 401k plan with an employer contribution. 

To Apply
 
To apply for this position, submit a cover letter and resume online at https://grossmansolutions.applytojob.com/apply. The cover letter should be concise and compelling and outline the specific ways in which you would be a good fit for this position. Only applications submitted through this website will be considered. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis.

WEST is an equal opportunity employer and strongly encourages applications from people of color, persons with disabilities, women, and LGBTQ applicants. As we work to create change through strategic communication, we are also working to create change in our company and our industry.